Day: 8 June 2016

Update1: As per April 2018, the process has slightly changes since I wrote this blog post. Now you can find it under “Downloads” tab, under “Servers” section. (Thanks to “David Shannon” for pointing this out.)

“Custom”: You go through SQL Server installation wizard to choose what you want to install

“Download Media”: To download SQL Server setup files and install them later

A while ago Microsoft decided to provide Developer edition of SQL Server 2014 and 2016 for free. So we should be able to download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for free legitimately. If you search for it on the Internet you’ll quickly find out that it is NOT that straightforward. In this post you see how to download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for free legally.

But, what is the difference between SQL Server Developer Edition and any other editions? Well, generally speaking, the Developer edition has all features of an Enterprise edition, but, it’s not for commercial use. To learn more about different editions of SQL Server 2016 have a look at here. I encourage you to see this datasheet as well.

To be able to download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for free you need to have MSDN Subscription or you can join Visual Studio Dev Essentials.

Download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition using MSDN Subscription:

If you do have an MSDN subscription you can easily download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for free. Just click here and download.